Corporation’s marathon man has a long-running plan to build an overseas channels empire

Friday 28 March 2014 10:40 BST

Tim Davie has gone from a crisis to high-quality drama in short order. Parachuted in as Director-General of the BBC after the Jimmy Savile affair claimed the scalp of George Entwistle, now as head of BBC Worlwide, the keen marathon runner is putting in the hard yards to take the corporation’s shows to the world.

“There is a global appetite for a British sensibility,” says the man who ensured that Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary episode was simulcast in 94 countries last November. “This isn’t just about waving the Union Jack, it is actually more profound in terms of how people laugh, how they think, how they write.”

A year into his tenure at Worldwide, the BBC’s commercial arm, Davie has criss-crossed the globe, visiting Australia, China and India, but his direction of travel is clear. The company will still stoke the appetite for its shows and formats, such as Top Gear and Strictly Come Dancing, as seen by the 725 buyers who convened in Liverpool last month at the BBC’s annual programme sales fair.

But Davie, 46, greying and lean in jacket and open-collared blue shirt, also wants to boost the Beeb’s overseas credentials as a consumer brand. That means building a network of channels: Top Gear-led BBC Brit, BBC First for drama and comedy and natural history-focused BBC Earth. His first challenge is to find more shows that fit the bill.

“The market for premium TV is getting stronger as people migrate to quality — it’s a very simple phenomenon.” Think The Musketeers, Sherlock or Line of Duty. Oddly, considering all the shows made from the licence fee, Worldwide is increasing its own pot of cash to £200 million a year so it can fund co-productions such as Intruders, starring John Simm. Davie likens it to the model used by the BBC’s landmark natural history programmes, where sometimes three-quarters of the money comes from outside the licence fee.

“What we are trying to do with that is not just replicate what is in the market but create things that are distinct and of a different quality,” he says. But given the amounts the US networks spend, can BBC America, his flagship State-side channel, really start to look like HBO, home to hits such as Game Of Thrones and The Sopranos?

“Clearly it’s a market where the numbers can be daunting in terms of content investment but the critical thing is the combination of the BBC’s horsepower in the UK plus our own resources in terms of attracting writers globally. I think the BBC has every right to compete on the stage in terms of high-quality drama.”

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The broad idea of re-selling BBC hits to the world, returning profits to supplement the £3.7 billion-a-year licence fee, is well-established. Last year, sales were £1.1 billion and Worldwide chipped £156 million into the pot. But the scale of its ambition has divided opinion. Sporadic talk that it was a golden goose to be sold or part-privatised illustrated that the corporation didn’t know quite what to do with it.

Now, as the BBC is put through the wringer of its next licence fee settlement, it is interesting to hear Davie say that after a cost-cutting drive he can increase returns as well as investment in co-productions.

Worldwide reached fresh heights under Davie’s predecessor, John Smith, who has since been made over as an unlikely fashionista, selling raincoats and fragrances as chief operating officer of Burberry. But it also overreached itself, as shown by the ill-advised acquisition of travel guide Lonely Planet, since reversed. Even now, the Beeb doesn’t know when to stop. We are sitting in an office that houses various independent producers, which Worldwide has taken a 25% stake in — a move rivals say is a land grab to secure valuable distribution rights.

Despite the name, the BBC’s commercial arm made most of its money at home, not abroad, for a long time. But that is changing. It still half-owns digital channels Gold, Dave and Watch and DVD sales are enjoying a last hurrah before Netflix takes hold, but the Radio Times has been sold off.

The future is digital. Davie has scrapped a global iPlayer app, instead boosting BBC.com with a view to doubling global reach to 500 million users by 2022. “One of the challenges for people running media businesses at the moment is the pain of choice,” he explains.

“If I am giving you a bit of content, what are you going to do with it? When are you going to go global, when are you going to give it to that online service versus that broadcaster?”

In the future, he’d like to be able to mine web data from the fans of shows to see how it can improve returns. “You have to be very clear between what is marketing and what is monetising.”

He is used to selling. Davie joined Procter & Gamble as a trainee, marketing everything from Vidal Sassoon shampoo to Insignia body sprays. But his commercial instincts were honed earlier, at Cambridge, when he ran a nightclub with Christian Tattersfield, who became the boss of Warner Music UK. “He used to play the music and I used to make the business work.”

At Pepsi, he masterminded a relaunch of the soft drink that culminated in the Daily Mirror’s redtop masthead turning blue for the day. He joined the BBC in 2005 as one of Director-General Mark Thompson’s first senior hires, later being promoted to run its vast radio arm, when questions were raised about his experience. “If it’s a new territory people always ask questions,” he says. “There is only ever one way to deal with that and that is to deliver in the job.”

On Davie’s watch, the stations were accused of acting overtly commercially, but he rattles off numerous examples of ambitious public-service projects, such as when Radio 4 gave over eight days of drama output to a dramatisation of Vasily Grossman’s epic novel Life and Fate.

In person, he is tenacious but a little tetchy, with lashings of marketing speak leavened by a deep self-belief that has propelled him across the Sahara and North Pole on endurance races. It could be that he is used to being on the defensive, given the tough time he had as Director-General, followed by revelations that Comic Relief, the charity he chairs, sank money into alcohol, tobacco and arms firms. Those three categories have since been sold, with findings of an investment review due next month.

But what is also clear is Davie’s determination and enthusiasm, to the extent that he’s even started reading drama scripts. “We must generate revenues but also generate appeal, buzz, marketing,” he adds. I think as a company we are still learning how to do it. This isn’t purely a vehicle for financial returns — as the world gets more global, we can build the BBC brand too.”

CV MILESTONES

1991 Procter & Gamble brand management trainee

1993 PepsiCo UK marketing manager, later Europe, and international marketing and general management roles

2005 BBC director of marketing, communications and audiences

2008 director of audio and music

2012 acting director-general

2013 BBC Worldwide chief executive

Personal life

Married with three sons. Runs to relax.

Best advice I've ever received: “One of my ex-bosses was a wonderful, courageous leader who lived life to the full, did not take himself too seriously and delivered fantastic results through his teams. His mantra was: ‘Be generous and do something significant’.”